Hey all

First off topic thread other than the hello thread .

For those up for some interesting listening, ign.com`s retro section put up a podcast this week in its "Retrocity" series which focuses on emulation.

Link:
http://au.retro.ign.com/articles/937/937079p1.html

I found it to be quite interesting, hearing the game review industries views on emulation.

Piracy? I dissagree, true, people do commit piracy using emulation, but I belive most people acctually own these games(me included ).

But it is interesting on how you can argue weather the older retro games, downloading them is piracy or not. There are games that i've always wanted to play like the original harvest moon (which is getting a rerelease on the wii!)

But its also interesting to find out why people on here emulate, is it because you want to play the "rare hard to find games"?

My reason for emulation is my broken PS2 can't read disks. Is it wrong for me to emulate? I think not.

I'll actually agree that Piracy is mainly made for emulation. True, the makers of them often just want to show off their skills and hopefully it'll land them a sweet job at a company one day, but at least 90% of the people whom use the emulator will be most likely be pirates. It's how it is.

Well I both agree and disagree with that. On one hand yes on the side of piracy in the case of older consoles (if it can be called that when its in reference to older consoles). For example I absolutely LOVED Secret of Mana on the snes, and once I heard that a japanese only sequel Sekken Densetsu (or similar spelling) was in existance and had received an english patch I absolutely had to play it. By that point in time the snes had long passed it used by date as it was the ps1 era by that stage if I recall correctly. There was no legitimate way in that situation where I could play the game in english.

Where as in the case of the ps1 and ps2 I only play the games I own and use an emulator simply as a matter of convenience plus you can have the games played in higher resolutions, and memory card space issues are a thing of the past.

Also there is the 3rd case in emulators such as dosbox where there is no other way with todays technology where you could play those games on your pc other than using that emulator (ie System Shock 1, Syndicate, Wingcommander 2 etc etc).

Now yes there will always be the true element of piracy in the scene (just look at how many times someone does a first post here and says they downloaded the game that they want assistance on) and yes it is a large percentage of those that use it. But emulators like pcsx2 weren`t made for those people.

On the overall whole I absolutely love emulation, and how it allows people to experience systems that they never would have been able to experience otherwise. Whether it be because their original system died 5-10 years ago, or because they weren`t alive or couldn`t afford that system back when it was at its prime and still sold in stores.

i've been through 7 ps2's.... 1st got stolen a few weeks after xmas, the other 4 broke down, have 2 working ps2's atm, which are in possesion of other members of the family. the last one is fixable-ish, needs a new dvd drive, but i aint paying out for one, equipment like that shouldnt break. As far as im concerned, as long as i acctually own it, having a software alternative is leagal (and as far as copyrighting goes, its all good).

But yes alot of people just download, thinking its safe, it makes a bad name for honest people, but thats the way of the world.

You could even take SecuRom into account with this. EA (and now more and more publishers) use this as anti piracy, which pretty much doesnt work the way they wanted to. We could see this on the future of consoles and console games. As an increasing number of people commit piracy on the console. Nowhere is safe.

Well the SecuRom issue is a totally PC specific issue. But yes that one has actually resulted in more pc users resorting to piracy since they dont want (and rightfully so) a limit on how many times they can install the game.

Bioshock for example only allows you to install the game 7 times, then thats it. Wont install ever again. Absolute bullshit, and I cant see how that could have done any good at all. I still bought the game. But yeah. Grrr.

Ah but my point being ishow long is it before this happens on console games of the future, i can see sony doing this for sure, they've done it with music, and they did it with securom (its a sony bi-product).

And microsoft want to smack down on piracy too, if you have a "modified" xbox, you can't play online. The main reason microsoft created xbox live is to stop piracy on the xbox, it was just happistance that they also used it to alllow online gaming.

Will they say "you have to be online every 3 days to play this game" with everygame.

Then what will happen to emulation, when 20 years have passed and the 360/ps3/wii becomes obsolete. Will it have copyright protection? It'll be going against the law then to emulate the game using something to bypass the software.

Will the law turn a blind eye to that? the companys that hold rights won't. And with the maga ISP's wanting to monitor and restrict everything we do, who will there be to make emulation, like the podcast says, its preservation, not piracy (for those who think of it that way and not a way for "free games"). where will you find a ps2 or any other console that exsists now in 20-40 years, millions were sold, but how many will be left.

The N64 the dream cast, playstation. All well known consoles, that at least sold in 6 figure didgets, yet i cant find a working dream cast anywhere, and only of the few ps1's not the original old somewhat bulky playstation. Thousands are stil out there naturally, but will i be able to get one when im old (60 ish?? playing computer games at 60 Hardcore baby!)

I belive the same will happen with our new more modern consoles, Thank god the PC has stood its ground, the PC has changed on the outside, but at its core its all the same, just half the size.

EDIT:
Let me also add this into the equation, Electro Migration, the bane of all things electronic, Basicly, it means anything with a computer chip will stop working eventully, calculator, mobile/cell phone, computer (namely the CPU, if you overclock its life is even shorter, but thats irrelivent)

Now a normal chip, will last 25ish years of time while its turned on, if you got it on standby, its still on, not proccessing however (but it still counts life away, just at a slower pace) Eventualy anything electronic is doomed to die, material can only last X amount of time, like a human. Everything dies, and unless new ones are made, they become extinct. Without the internet and emulation, the old games would definatly dissappear forever. Given time, that is.

Well I think that with ps3 / xbox360 emulation all you need is to be able to decrypt the firmware much along the same lines as was done on the psp.

Remember the psp requires current firmwares on all the recently released games, and yet the hacking scene managed to find a way around that.